'Minority Report': Star Meagan Good and EP Max Borenstein Preview Fox's Sci-Fi Reboot

When Minority Report premieres on Fox on Sept. 21, it will only be the second Steven Spielberg movie to make the jump to the small screen. The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles — based on on his beloved Indiana Jones adventures— has the distinction of being first, originally premiering in 1992. But where that series was a prequel, Minority Report is a sequel, picking up where Spielberg’s 2002 blockbuster left off.

Set in the distant future of 2054, the film followed PreCrime law enforcer John Anderton (Tom Cruise) as he worked to make the world a little safer by preventing crimes before they happened thanks to the visions of three psychic Precogs…that is, until they foresaw him becoming a murderer. Anderton eventually brought down that PreCrime system, and the series opens 11 years later in 2065, with one of the Precogs, Dash (Stark Sands), seeking the help of another cop, Lara Vega (Meagan Good), to help prevent the grisly acts of violence he still sees in his head. In advance of the series premiere, Yahoo TV spoke separately with Good and Minority Report showrunner Max Borenstein to discuss the show’s “bright, happy” future and what it’s like collaborating with Spielberg in order to bring one of his best-reviewed movies to television.

Unlike other television adaptations of hit movies, Minority Report continues the story of the film rather than rebooting it. How did you arrive at that approach?
Max Borenstein: I got a phone call from the executives at Amblin Television and they asked if I had a take on how to adapt Minority Report for television. And then they asked if I’d be interested in pitching to Steven Spielberg. I found my mouth saying “Yes,” before my brain even had an idea, because how could you pass that up? I watched the film again, and I was getting nervous because it tells a very clear story about the downfall of PreCrime and why it was flawed. So the obvious way of adapting the film — simply chronicling the annals of the PreCrime squad — not only felt boring, but also disingenuous to the theme of the movie. But the last shot told us that the Precogs were sent to this isolated island after living their entire adult lives in what was essentially a milk bath. And I thought, “That’s the show!” Instead of being about the institution of PreCrime, it’s about the aftermath and being a Precog who still sees murders, but doesn’t have the infrastructure for stopping them. What do you do if you can see the future? What’s your obligation or responsibility?

The relationship between Dash and Vega is already very different than the one shared by Anderton and Samantha Morton’s Agatha in the movie. What sort of conflicts will the work through as the series progresses?
Meagan Good: He initially doesn’t trust me because he can’t trust anybody, and the people he does trust takes advantage of him. With Vega, her father died when she was younger; he was a cop as well and was murdered, so she does this because she really wants a piece of him. She’s used to working alone and doing things her way and Dash is very determined and childlike. They’re starting to realize how much they need each other and learning to trust people for the first time outside of the families.

It’s interesting that Vega expresses a longing for the PreCrime days. Even with all this technology at her disposal, she’s essentially doing the same jobs as today’s police officers, and seems frustrated by that.
Borenstein: In the movie, PreCrime was both wish fulfillment and kind of Orwellian. In our show, it doesn’t exist anymore so on the one hand you’re not arresting people for something they’ve never done, but there’s this nostalgia for the safety and security it provided. Vega has nostalgia for the PreCrime past because then she wouldn’t be just a cop picking up the pieces. She could stop crimes before they happen. Dash isn’t so nostalgic, because he was enslaved as a tool of the system. Yet at the same time, he’s plagued by these visions and the knowledge that he can’t stop them.

What kind of balance will the series strike between case-of-the-week elements with serialized storytelling?
Good: That’s a thing we’ve all been talking about it. There will definitely be procedural elements in every episode, but we don’t want each week to be about solving a murder. All of these characters are so rich that you’ll start to see how they’re worlds collide. There will be arcs for everybody.

Borenstein: We’re looking to shows like The X-Files as a model for how to strike a great balance. With that show, you can watch and enjoy each episode individually, but taken together, they lay the groundwork for things that become a larger puzzle. You can miss previous episodes of Minority Report and still enjoy the show as a procedural every week; the episodes will have a satisfying beginning, middle and end. But we’ve also got a really great serial arc planned for our first seaoson that builds to bigger things than you can anticipate. And it evolves our characters, so we’re not just hitting the reset button at the end of every episode.

The series premiere has an impressive scope in terms of how this future Earth is portrayed. How will the world evolve?
Good: Our version of the future is not how it’s portrayed in a lot of other TV shows and movies. It’s not like the end of the world is coming and while there are a lot of bad things that happen, it’s kind of a bright and happy future. All the things we think about and imagine now exist in that time. I love that the writers are socially conscious, and put these little jewels in there without being specific or preachy. For example, Vega carries two guns. One is a Taser that will literally blow you across the room. And the other is a smart gun that won’t discharge unless the person is considered a physical threat or has a criminal history. That forces you to think harder about the life you could be ending. It’s very smart because the writers’ aren’t making a big thing of it, so the [political] statement is yours to choose.

Borenstein: One of the refreshing things about the film is that it didn’t posit a single catastrophic event that led to the future. It said, “50 years from now, what is the world going to look like?” And the answer was that the world is going to be good and bad in equal measure to today. We have horrible thing that happen in our world, so I don’t think we need to conjure up an apocalypse on our show to have real stakes.

Bradley Cooper will have a recurring role on CBS’ Limitless series. Any chance that we’ll see Tom Cruise re-appear in the world of Minority Report?
Good: Never say never to anything! Tom Cruise has a tendency to do things he thinks are fun.

Borenstein: It would be amazing to have Tom Cruise on the show, but we have no immediate plans. However, we do have immediate plans to bring back certain characters and actors from the film that fans will appreciate.

Minority Report director Steven Spielberg is onboard as an executive producer. What’s been your experience working with him?
Borenstein: He’s incredibly involved and given his schedule, I just marvel at the fact that he’s able to provide feedback on everything from outlines to scripts to cuts of the episodes. He’s a believer in the season we went in and pitched to him. He gave notes on costumes, props and technology. One of our recent drafts came back to us with a note about a piece of technology we could use in one scene that felt like a cocktail napkin sketch. When you get things like that, you pinch yourself.

Good: I haven’t met him yet, but I’m looking forward to it. We’re constantly getting information that’s been passed down from him. I just hope he doesn’t come to set on a day where I have a ton of lines. I’d be so nervous! [Laughs]

Minority Report premieres Sept. 21 at 9 p.m. on Fox